When it comes to young male actors, Zac Efron may be the closest thing we have to a Golden Boy. America's fondness for this fun-sized hunk runs so deep that we've happily looked past a number of possible red flags: His mysteriously broken jaw, two separate trips to rehab, New Year's Eve. But this new one might be the reddest flag of them all: Late Sunday night, Efron got in a fistfight with some transients on skid row and according to TMZ "got cold cocked in the mouth."

The official report put Efron in that notoriously sketchy neighborhood due to running out of gas. While waiting for a tow truck, he or his bodyguard allegedly threw a bottle out the window and it shattered near a group of vagrants who proceeded to charge the car and engage in a full on "melee" during which Efron received a punched to the face that was "the hardest I've ever been hit in my life." The police didn't press charges as they deemed it "mutual combat," but that doesn't mean we're done theorizing about what exactly was going on there. TMZ doesn't outright dispute Efron's side of the story, but its story URL does seem to suggest they do have a theory: "zac-efron-fight-skid-row-drugs". Because yeah, as an L.A. resident I can tell you that skid row + celebrity = drug problem. Just ask Nick Stahl. Anyway, yeah, let's cross our fingers Zac Efron really did run out of gas that night because otherwise this story could take a turn for the horrible. [TMZ]